The Atlantic: Is Stalin Making a Comeback in Russia?
A statue of the Soviet dictator in Russia’s third-largest city says much about the country today. But it’s not necessarily a win for the Kremlin.
NOVOSIBIRSK, Russia—To find Joseph Stalin here in Russia’s third-largest city, drive down the main thoroughfare, Red Аvenue, past Lenin Square. At the Ob River, turn left on Bolshevik Street until you reach a two-story wooden building with traditionally carved window trimmings.
There, at the Communist Party’s local headquarters on a sunny day in May, the city’s mayor unveiled the bust of the “Generalissimo” to the dramatic opening chords of Beethoven’s Fifth.
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WNU Editor: Stalin is not making a comeback in Russia. I have seen these Russian polls on Stalin. They are written in such a way that even I would agree that Stalin played a pivotal role in Soviet history, and in defeating Germany in the Second World War. But that does not mean that I have a favourable view of that monster. I also know that when the question is asked .... would you want someone like Stalin ruling you. The answer among Russians is an overwhelmingly no.
ReplyDeleteThe remaining WWII vets or others of that era, I'd wager.
A monster indeed.
What would you wager - that positive opinions of Stalin are most common in that demographic? I doubt it. Remember that by the 1980s Stalin was almost completely dead to most people here. He made a massive comeback in the 90s, because the people bashing him the hardest then were also directly connected to policies that inflicted a great deal of misery on the post-Soviet population. So a lot of that population, who never experienced Stalin for themselves, got to thinking - if those bastards hate him so much, maybe he wasn't all that bad.
ReplyDeleteDidn't help that they lied all over the place, as if you need to lie to make Stalin or the Communists look bad. But once the professional anti-Stalinists from Memorial have, say, knowingly pushed inaccurate death tolls, and people began to notice, those people began to ask themselves - what else did those rats lie about?
And I agree with the Editor that the last question is the most telling. A lot of people don't really know that much about the period. As far as they know, maybe what Stalin did was necessary for those times. (I don't think it was, but I suspect I've read a lot more about that period than the average Russian.) But they don't want it now. The appeal of any kind of totalitarianism (as opposed to authoritarianism or managed democracy) in modern Russia is very weak, despite the best efforts of some groups to propagandise it.